6 Pieces of Advice from Starchitects to the young

6 Pieces of Advice from Starchitects to the younglast update: May 6, 2015

Everyone that works in the field of architecture knows that it takes quite a high level of commitment and desire to become an architect. Nobody becomes an architect because they think it sounds cool or because they simply like to draw. There is a lot more to it and I think there has to be some cautions for you to even think you will experience any measurable success, yet nevertheless, some architects are successful and well known because of their designs. We thought it might be helpful if we can get some advice and guidance from them to young architects, so we began to dig the web searching for some valuable points of advices from senior and starchitects to the young and aspiring ones, check out some of them below.

Do you have any advice for the young?

Zaha Hadid Architects: ” Focus, and work hard”“You have to be very focused and work very hard, but it is not about working hard without knowing what your aim is! You really have to have a goal. the goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. Know what it is that you are trying to find out”. DB interview, Jan 2007

Frank Gehry: “Be yourself !”” I tell my students my students that they should would not look over their shoulder, they should be themselves and find their own way, and they will slowly realize that they will become the experts in their work and that nobody else is an expert in their work and that they will have into that matter with somebody else, I mean yeah…” more in the video below

Peter Eisenman: “Stay away from architecture !”“unless you are really committed to being an architect in the true sense of the word, its a terrible business and I wouldn’t recommend it for anybody, unless you need to do it for some personal reason, I would say go into business, go into law, medicine, but don’t be an architect.” DB interview, April 8, 2002

Norman Foster: “Is architecture really what you want to do, if not, find something else!”
Foster advises upcoming architects and artists to make sure that what they’re doing is their true desire – if not, they should simply find something else. More in the video below

Norman Foster was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in his home near Geneva, Switzerland in April 2015.

Wolf d. prix: ” I have three advises”“First, if you only think in architectural terms, only architecture will come out. Secondly, it’s a quote (again from Bob Dylan), ‘Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters’. and the third is, you don’t need the weatherman to know how the wind blows.”

Daniel Libeskind “Follow the impossible”“Follow the impossible.”

Bjarke Ingels ” Design tomorrow’s world simple and clear”
We live in the anthropogenic age, where humans don’t adapt to life, but life adapts to human needs, Ingels explains, which makes his advice to young architects designing tomorrow’s world simple and clear. The key for young architects is to acquire the tools and language to comprehend the human needs outside of the architectural bubble, and understand that they are here to accommodate – and not to be accommodated.

Bjarke Ingels was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg in New York in December 2014.

In another interview with Ingels he gave this piece of advice to the young “Just like in science, architecture is a hypothetical deductive experimentation. You use your thinking to analyze and suggest and build up a conceptual framework. And when you can’t reach any higher, you can make an intuitive jump, a guess. You can suggest things and test them. But the higher you build before you jump, the higher you can reach.”